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Asashi Rosa
No account of Harrican Syldanade's life would be complete without mention of the beautiful women who wanted him dead. Foremost among these were the long-legged, perky-breasted assassinatrices of the Asashi Rosa. The Greenleaf Interviews Other than brief mentions in Syldanade's own journals, all that is known of this covert group of buxom killers comes from a monograph sent by Dr. Horace Greenleaf to his nephew Franklin, containing (presumably) complete transcriptions of the elder Greenleaf's interviews with nine reformed Asashi Rosa members. The monograph begins: "It is very likely that my mortal shell will soon be discovered, post flagrante delicto, as it were. Do not cry for me, as your aunt and I have not shared a bedroom in quite some time, and I must say I've rather missed the touch of a woman who would like to murder me. Your primary concern right now is the lethal information you hold in your hands, comprising some twenty years' work on the part of your late uncle. I flatter myself that its preservation is important, but to possess it is inevitably fatal. Therefore, I suggest you have seven copies made and sent to people you don't like, and those people have seven copies made and sent to people they don't like, and so on. That way, someone might just be able to finish reading this before a poison-tipped stiletto heel finds its way to their carotid artery." Two days prior to the monograph's delivery, Dr. Greenleaf was found dead in a room of the Prix Fixée Hotel on Delpfhstadt's infamous Rue de Virtue. Cause of death was declared, in the conversational style then legally mandated for all official documents by Delpfhstadt's middle-aged boy-king Pene del Cavallo, to be "probably the fishnet stockings in his esophagus; definitely something along those lines. Oh, and you will never believe all the places we found lipstick." Five days later, Franklin Greenleaf vanished completely, having told the servants he was going out for pipe tobacco. It is believed that he orchestrated his own disappearance in order to evade the Asashi Rosa, and, since his body was never found, that he was successful in doing so, but no actual evidence yet exists to support this theory or any others. The exact movements of the monograph or its copies are likewise unknown; attempting to retrace them would constitute several decades' research on its own. Suffice it to say that as of three o'clock on the day of this writing, seven copies exist in the temporary custody of the Neufbranzen Mounted Postal Society, and it is likely that several hundred more have managed to avoid destruction at the hands of those who do not wish the following information to become public. Physical Requirements and Recruiting Asashi Rosa members are taught a variety of unarmed and improvised-weapon combat skills (see below), but the cornerstone of their assassination technique is the Auxrhiental martial art kousagi koneko, which loosely translated means "fifty thousand ways I can kill you without losing honor while reading a book if I feel like it." The discipline requires a general slenderness, long cigarette-holder-like legs, and breasts pert enough to stay out of the way but still weighty enough to break every bone in a man's hand when used as a cosh -- all traits required also for models and mannequins. It is quite sensible, therefore, for the Asashi Rosa to find new recruits among their ranks in fashionable cities like Delpfhstadt, Ainstoq, and Firezza. The recruitment process is simple and horrifyingly effective. A girl is selected, presumably for her physical merits, and approached by senior assassinatrices, who befriend her and befuddle her senses with an orgy of shopping before engaging her bloodlust. One of Dr. Greenleaf's interviewees recalls it thus: "It's a little clearer, now, but at the time, such a fog! I barely knew myself. Satin ruffles, crème du mere buttons, darling little blue velvet bows. My head was swimming. We seemed never to be in one place for more than a few moments, just long enough for them to dazzle me with the sparkle off Rhys-Enfant crystal and drape me in another layer of organza. I half-thought I was being made into a death-puppet, that any moment they would shout Run! draw them off the King! and I would start running in my, oh, my new silk stockings, I am ashamed to say now that I weep to think of them. Dauxine and I had a... disagreement, and she slashed them, my poor stockings. I hope some death-puppet now has them, for its sake. They would look very tasty to demons." "Oh, but I'm sorry, you wanted to know about the, my... it's no excuse, I have no excuse, but the fog, and the sparkle, and the thirty-two different colors of suede -- I barely noticed when it was dark, and we were alone, and the man, was he tied up? I suppose he must have been. My head was too full of dresses for thinking. And then there was the voice, cutting through all the fog. I heard my name, clear, like a bell. 'Geneviette,' the voice said, 'this man does not think you ought to have those boots,' and I... God forgive me, I crushed his head with my thighs." Once the girl has committed her first act of murder, it is the work of a moment for her new friends to convince her to go away with them to a place where she will be safe from the law and have many pairs of elbow-length gloves. After one month's gradual indoctrination, her training begins. Training, Combat and Otherwise The Asashi Rosa consider reliance on a weapon to be a dangerous proof of one's weakness. The aforementioned kousagi koneko, which requires nothing other than one's own bone and muscle, a working knowledge of anatomy, and the power of positive thinking, is therefore central to combat training. Every one of the organization's assassinatrices must prove herself theoretically capable of killing a man in the hard vacuum of space, with both of them naked, before she is allowed to work in the field. This is not to imply, however, that operatives are not encouraged to use everything in their surroundings to best tactical advantage. To the contrary, opportunism is considered a sacred virtue (line 16 of the Asashi Rosa Pledge reads: "I will get him to buy me dinner first") and the girls receive extensive training in improvised weapons and the dom'mi hostili, simple ways to make common household objects much more lethal. A trained assassinatrix can hamstring a target with a cotton swab and slice his head off with a powder compact without deigning to perspire. Should all else fail, each Asashi Rosa member is equipped with a tiny but deadly intra-uterine dagger that also functions as a birth control device, although extra-uterine use of these in any but the most dire of circumstances is heavily frowned upon. In addition to combat training, new recruits are put through several charm courses to ensure their transformation into alluring instruments of death, setting them apart from your common or garden assassin. Another of Greenleaf's interviewees lists several things she learned in these courses: "Sketching, to start with, then all manner of art. And music -- I was never any good with instruments, but to this day if you handed me a spielenforte I could make you cry with it. Or laugh, of course, or feel anything I wanted you to feel. Conversation, we spent a lot of time on conversation. Go ahead, ask me about pork futures. I can discuss pork futures most captivatingly. If I want you to, you will go home tonight with a lifelong passion for pork futures stirring in your breast, planted there by someone who isn't entirely sure what pork futures are. I don't have to know. It's a trick you do with your eyes and your smile and a few well-chosen words. The fate of pigs, I suppose. Who cares? I never did." "Hmm, what else? Posture, of course, and the marital arts, which I hate to discuss... not out of prudishness, I simply feel it would be a cruelty, when you are already regarding me the way a hungry man regards a tray of pastries. Oh, pastries, we learned how to cook those, along with everything else. Twenty-eight different varieties of Auxrhiental tea ceremony. I do not exaggerate. There is nothing inexact about that number. Twenty-eight varieties of tea ceremony. I never ever understood the point. 'We're going to kill the man anyway, aren't we?' I asked once. 'Why don't we just snap his neck while the kettle's on instead of fussing ourselves over which color dragon is supposed to face east?'" "They put me in the Ivory Box for that, of course. They were always putting me in the Ivory Box for something. I should thank them for it. No threat will ever frighten me again." What Little Is Known of the Organization Itself Greenleaf's interviews contain much of everyday life within the Asashi Rosa, but practically nothing about the organization's chain of command, reason for existence, criteria for choosing targets, or anything else of real import. It is simply not known whether these assassins were strictly mercenary or in the employ of a government, religion, or private individual. Attempts to detect a pattern in the list of victims provided by Greenleaf's nine repentants have proven frustrating as well: the assassinated appear to vary on every biographical particular, significant and trivial. The only higher-level operative known to the field agents, and by extension, to us, is the woman known only as the Pinkest Lady, who, as Repentant Three describes it, was in charge of assigning the missions: "We called her that because she was the pinkest lady any of us ever saw. She had the sweetest smile, and she never spoke. Whenever she had a job for one of us, she would come into the common room, clap her hands twice, and beckon to the girl whose turn it was. Then we would all play charades to discover the -- the victim's name and address. Only we never called him 'the victim', you know, it was always 'the client,' as though he himself had hired us. There were just... things we did, like that. We called them clients, we always spoke kindly of them, and we never let them die unhappy. That last in particular was a point of pride." "She really was marvellous at charades, you know, the Pinkest Lady. I have no idea how I would even attempt to convey 'Sir Blankington Shropkins of Munsleydale Road, West Harpingsworth, Gretcham,' and she just bent right over and did it. I rather wanted to be her when I grew up." Involvement With Harrican Syldanade Syldanade's account of his life and travels contains no fewer than four hundred and seventy-three possible instances of beautiful women trying to kill him. Of these, ninety-two encounters fit the modus operandi of an Asashi Rosa assassination attempt so closely as to leave little room for doubt, seventeen are definitely unrelated, one hundred and eighty could go either way, and the rest are so vague that they might be referring to anything, as in this entry dated Strad. 3, 1691 (TC): "Got tight last night on Auronian goat's sick. Head killing me. Regret disembowelling that woman with bar stool. Sort of thing Martha gets sarcastic about. Glad she's not here. More later. Must make deposit in the First National Bank of the Next Thing I Find To Throw Up In." While it is highly plausible that Syldanade was indeed a target of the Asashi Rosa, exactly who hired them, and why, remains a mystery. His lifelong rival Malinveer Ashmanning might have done it for any number of reasons, or any of his lovers, out of jealousy over any of his other lovers. Every government, religion, explorers' society, or gentleman's club he encountered on Terra or off tended to be upset with him over one thing or another, nor is his role in various prophecies [[List of prophecies featuring Harrican Syldanade]] to be overlooked as a potential motive for murder. Conclusion What we do not know about this mysterious all-female group of assassins outweighs what we do know by a factor of several magni-manies. It is high time for Dr. Greenleaf's research into the organization to be resumed. Perhaps, someday, there will be nothing about the Asashi Rosa and their connection to Harrican Syldanade that we do not understand. Until then, we must keep tugging at the loose threads. Fifteen hours after posting this article, Marjorie le Cire-Têtard was found dead in a jasmine-scented bubble bath, the one thing she most feared and hated in all the universe. Foul play is therefore suspected. The local constabulary are looking into it. I doubt they will find anything. In accordance with her last request, I have agreed to carry on her work with the Harrican Syldanade project, except for that silly bit about resuming Dr. Greenleaf's research into the Asashi Rosa, which I think we can all agree is a dumb idea. Maribel le Cire-Têtard 19:14, June 25, 2010 (UTC)